bloody

“Is blood supposed to be coming out of the faucet?” My Darling B asked yesterday when she went to wash her hands in the bathroom sink. The short answer was yes, blood was supposed to come out of the faucet. I was so desperate to get a plumber here to work on the water heater that I accepted an offer from Cthulu in exchange for my eternal fealty. Plumbing emergencies will make a guy do some weird shit. Cthulu’s a pretty good plumber, by the way. Shows up on time, gets the job done right, is actually very personable and professional, the cats liked him. Prices are a little steep. And there’s that blood from the faucets thing. But still, thumbs up.

It was the water heater this time. Last week Friday I noticed a puddle of water creeping out from under it, and by Saturday morning the puddle had gotten much wider until, on Sunday, it was snaking its way across the floor to a drain on the other side of the room. I called a plumber first thing Monday morning, the same guys who installed the water heater about four years ago, and they said they would stop by some time between one and two o’clock that afternoon, but when two-thirty came and there was still no plumber I gave them another call and they said they would have to reschedule, so I dumped them and called another plumber. Not Cthulu, although the guy who showed up was dressed in a green uniform. Didn’t have an octopus face or anything. His name was Pat. He hummed while he worked.

Pat took a long look at the water heater and figured that the tank had cracked along the seam. He says that happens a lot to new water heaters these days. You’re lucky to get ten years out of them, he says, so cracking after just four years isn’t all that strange. The good news was it was still under warranty, so all we’d have to pay for was the labor and whatever pipes and valves he had to replace. He said he could do it right away and I said go ahead, so he called the shop to order a new heater, then set to work sawing off pipes to disconnect the old heater while the water drained from the bottom.

About fifteen minutes later, another guy, I never did get his name, pulled into the driveway with a new water heater boxed up in the back of a pickup truck. He and Pat got it ready, hauled the old water heater up out of the basement and took the new water heater down. While they were cleaning up and packing the old water heater away on the bed of the pickup truck, I noticed that the screen door was propped open. “Has that door been open long?” I asked Pat, who said it had, then caught himself. “Oh, shoot,” he said, “the cats.” I wasn’t too worried that Boo had gotten out. She dived under the sofa when the big strange men showed up and hadn’t come out. I couldn’t find Bonkers anywhere, though, and he definitely would have taken advantage of an open door. I started a search of the front yard, calling his name and kissing the air. Didn’t have to search far or call his name more than once before he answered with a thin “meaow.” Couldn’t see him, though, so I called his name again. “Meeaow.” When I finally zeroed in on him, I found him cowering behind the wheel of Pat’s van. Ten feet from the front door was as far as he got before he chickened out on his quest to see the world.

It took Pat a couple more hours to hook up the new water heater to the water and gas lines and fire it up. And it burns with the fires of hell, cranking out water hot enough to take even B by surprise, and she can stand water a lot hotter than I can. Her hands are usually bright red after she washes them under the tap, but yesterday she jumped back and yelped when she opened the faucet the way she usually did and got live steam, or something close to it. I checked the thermostat on the heater and even turned it down a notch, but it was set just one notch above “hot” with several more notches above that. I’d hate to see what comes out of the faucets when it’s turned up all the way. Maybe blood.